Beneath the Cherry Tree
by Mnemosyne's Elegy
Summary: Both Yukine and Yato have lost friends beneath the cherry trees, and a chance encounter threatens to dig up buried bones.


The cherry tree was blooming again. Yukine had happened past yesterday and noticed the delicate pink blossoms spreading along the branches. It had put him in a bleak, melancholy mood, but he had managed to thwart its gravitational pull throughout the rest of the day and the next morning before giving in. So here he was, traipsing down the lawn toward the base of the tree, but it was already going in a different direction than he had expected.

For one, he had not expected to find Yato here.

The god stood beneath the boughs, dark hair swaying gently in the breeze and face tilted up toward the blossoms arching overhead. His hands were shoved in his pockets and there was something unguarded and vulnerable about the slump of his shoulders. A moment in time where he was alone to drop all the masks if he wished. Or thought he was alone.

Yukine…was not horribly sympathetic. If anything, he was irritated. He just wanted a few minutes of peace, and here was the least peaceful person on the planet invading his sanctuary. Could he never escape?

Still, he wouldn't allow himself to be chased off so easily. He stomped over with a scowl plastered on his face and stopped beside Yato.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice harsher than he meant it to be.

A faint sheen of wistful melancholy clouded Yato's eyes as he stared up at the flowers, but now he looked over and blinked at Yukine in something like incomprehension. Then he pulled himself together and smiled, although it wasn't as bright as usual and had an almost sad edge to it. Yukine wondered what was up with him.

"Just checking out the cherry blossoms," Yato said with a shrug. "They're looking good this year."

Yukine let out a breath through his nose. "Have you checked them out enough yet or are you going to stand here all day?"

"Hm?" Yato, dense god that he was, stared stupidly, but then sudden comprehension lit his eyes. "Ah, that's why I've had an ache in my chest the last day or so, huh?"

Yukine started. Of course… If he was feeling melancholy and out of sorts, Yato would feel it too. It didn't entirely explain the strange atmosphere hanging over the god like a cloud, but it was a sharp reminder for Yukine to be more careful. He huffed out a breath, crossed his arms over his chest, and scowled at the ground. The apology stuck in his throat.

"Maybe you have heartburn," he said instead.

For once, Yato didn't rise to the bait. "This was the tree your friend was tending. Suzuha, was it?"

He was kind enough not to say 'the tree your friend died under', but that hung in the air between them regardless. Yukine was surprised Yato even remembered Suzuha's name, given he'd shown little interest in the friendship while it was developing other than to throw out warnings about getting too close to Bishamon's shinki when they were sworn enemies. At least Yukine wasn't the only one who remembered.

"Forget it," he grumbled. He whipped around and made to storm off. "I'll come back later."

Yato's hand whipped out faster than thought to close around his arm like a vise. "Wait."

"Let me go!" Yukine snarled, trying unsuccessfully to tug his arm away. It was no use. Yato might not look like much, but he was a seasoned warrior and had the wiry strength to match.

"Talk to me. I keep telling you, just talk to me about these things. You know I can feel it. It's better to get it out there instead of bottling it up."

"You're one to talk! Well, I don't want to talk about it! And especially not with _you_!"

"Give it a try, kid. I _know_ you wouldn't want to ignore your favorite god's advice."

Yukine wasn't in the mood for jokes, no matter how serious Yato's eyes stayed.

"You stupid gods," he growled. He threw all his weight backwards, but Yato held on tight. "You just sit there being all superior and throw out orders like we're tools who should just wait around until you need us. It's not _fair_. Suzuha loved Bishamon and wanted her to be happy and smiled even when he was hurting. All he wanted was for her to notice him, care about him, and she never even glanced his way! How horrible is it to make a whole big family but have everyone still be so alone?

"He spent so long tending these flowers and this stupid tree, hoping that some human girl would come back and remember him. And even when she came back, it was like she'd never seen him before, like he wasn't even important enough to remember! And then she made him a promise and disappeared for good. It's like no matter where he went, he was invisible and no one cared enough to even remember–"

Yukine froze and the words withered in his throat. A faint frown pinched Yato's features, and his eyes had clouded over. Suddenly, Yukine felt bad for venting his grief-fueled rage and especially for throwing this last piece at his god. Because wasn't that what Yato was afraid of too? What had plagued him all his life and beaten him down?

Suzuha wasn't the only one who had felt invisible and forgotten and unappreciated.

"S-sorry," Yukine mumbled. He dropped his gaze to the ground and let it wander around the grass.

Yato waved a hand dismissively and released the shinki's arm. "Keep going."

"I just…" Tears were welling in Yukine's eyes now, maybe they had been gathering there all along in defiance of his anger, and he blinked them back. It wasn't fair, he thought, to have died at an age where he was always either angry and bitter and gruff about everything or bawling his eyes out at nothing. "I only knew him for a few weeks, really, so it's silly to think I could have made a difference. But he was my friend and I thought that… I thought that maybe I could…help or…make him feel less lonely or something. But then he died right after and I couldn't do anything, so…"

Yukine sniffed and dragged his sleeve across his eyes. His throat felt thick and his eyes burned. Yato stood beside him silently for a long time, and Yukine wondered if he was still mad about the outburst. This would be the perfect time to escape now that his arm was free, but Yukine just hunched his shoulders and waited.

"Bishamon made mistakes with her shinki," Yato said finally. Yukine risked a glance up, but the god wasn't watching him. He was staring up at the cherry tree again, his eyes distant. "And they'll haunt her forever, I think. But she's finally learned something from them, and she's trying to build up her family right this time. She's a crazy bitch and bites off more than she can chew and sometimes forgets to give all her shinki the attention they deserve, but whatever else, she genuinely loves them all. I think she's going to make sure they all know it now, and she's making changes to ensure this doesn't happen again."

"What good does that do?" Yukine grumbled. "Suzuha is already dead."

"Don't be selfish, Yukine," Yato said without any heat. "There will be more shinki after him, and they will have better lives because of the lessons Bishamon learned from the mistakes she made with him and the others. You can mourn for Suzuha, but don't begrudge others their happiness just because he didn't have the chance to find his."

Yukine flinched at the gentle rebuke, but still muttered, "I'm glad you don't keep a whole harem of shinki."

"Now, _there's_ a thought," Yato mused. He chuckled as Yukine whacked him hard on the arm. "As if. You're so territorial that there would be fireworks. You really do want me all for yourself, don't you?"

" _Yato_."

Yato relented with a sigh. "Bishamon and I have different ideas of how to handle shinki and different needs to meet. It's just a different way of doing things. She has noble ideals, really, making a family and a place for so many shinki to belong. You would get to be part of a team and have lots of friends to rely on instead of just having"—he gestured to himself in a self-deprecating fashion—"me. Sort of the trade-off between having a whole family dynamic or a really deep bond with one person.

"You see, Suzuha's Near Shore girl… We can't interact with the Near Shore on equal terms…you know that. They don't notice or they forget or they grow up and die. Even Hiyori… One day she'll forget or die, Yukine. I know it's hard, but…that's partly what Bishamon is trying to protect. I was glad you made friends with another shinki, because…Far Shore relationships are the ones that will sustain us in the long run. If we want lasting friends, we have to make them with each other."

Yukine's lips trembled. "Hiyori won't forget."

Yato glanced down at Yukine, and his smile was sad. "Maybe, maybe not. But one day she'll die even if she never forgets, and we could live for hundreds more years. In the grand scheme of things, we won't have her for very long. That's what makes relationships with people from the Near Shore so painful when they do develop."

Yukine's breath hitched and those stupid tears flooded his eyes again. "Then what does it even matter?" he asked harshly.

He regretted the words as they left his mouth because this was _Hiyori_ they were talking about and of course she mattered, but why did Yato have to make everything seem so bleak?

Yato's eyes were gentle. "I think you really did make a difference for Suzuha, even if you didn't know him for very long. I'm sure you made him happier. Just because you only knew him for a short time doesn't mean that time wasn't important. Just like it doesn't make Hiyori any less important because we'll lose her too soon.

"When you live for centuries, it's easy to get jaded. What does anything matter, anyway? Those humans whose wishes you grant? They burn bright like sparks and die just as quickly, and others take their place. What does each little moment matter when you'll have a million more to wade through? If you play the long game…if all you consider are the centuries stretching ahead…if all you remember is a nebulous, condensed blur of centuries past…then does any individual thing matter at all?"

"Yato…"

Yukine scrubbed away the film of tears and blinked at the god. Something about those words made him uneasy, and an uncomfortable feeling squirmed in his stomach.

He forgot, sometimes, that Yato was old. Normally the god acted like a goofy child, younger and more naïve than even Yukine, and it made him seem more approachable. It lulled Yukine into treating him like an annoying friend rather than a god who had seen centuries pass him by. And maybe that was the point. Maybe Yato deliberately cultivated that aura to make himself more relatable to the others instead of pushing them away with the very obvious distance between them.

And then he would fall into one of his serious moments, one of those moments where his words held the wisdom of centuries and his eyes glowed old and bright and he turned into a different kind of being that was impossible for Yukine and Hiyori to fathom, and it would be jarring. But then he would perk up and crack a joke and everything was back to normal again.

Still, hearing that divide laid out so baldly caught Yukine off guard. In this moment, it felt like he was talking not to a whiny, annoying prankster but to a _god_.

Yato tipped his head and smiled again. "You survive by making meaning, living in each moment even if it might seem worthless in the grand scheme of things. You find the humor in the most random things, throw yourself into every fight or scheme or project no matter how small, look for the beauty in even the most ephemeral things, treasure every short-lived moment of friendship. Each one of those moments means something, as long as you appreciate it. They give meaning to your present, hope for your future, and remembrance for your past.

"Maybe you only had Suzuha for a few weeks, maybe we'll only have Hiyori for a few years, but that time we spent with them is infinitely precious and made an impact on both you and them. And you'll remember. You're here today because you remember Suzuha, and you'll probably be reminded of him for a long time to come whenever you see his tree. We keep those moments alive long after they fade away. Don't you think it means something, to remember a friend who it seems like everyone else has forgotten? Even if Suzuha's Near Shore girl forgot him, even if Bishamon overlooked him, _you_ remember him still. We all want to matter to someone, be important to someone, be remembered by someone. Maybe you only spent a few weeks with Suzuha, but I'm sure those weeks were precious to him too. So you _did_ make a difference."

A strange, strangled sound choked its way out of Yukine's throat like a sob, and he covered his eyes as the held-back tears broke free. Life wasn't fair—it wasn't _fair_ —and he missed Suzuha and he didn't want to lose Hiyori and it hurt that he could never live any kind of normal life now that he was dead.

But he wanted to _believe_. Yato's words were so beautiful that they hurt, both bleakly hopeless and awe-inspiringly hopeful, and they scoured Yukine from the inside out like Yato had peered deep into his soul and shone a flashlight on all the darkest, most painful parts and then gently offered not a cure—there was no cure, not for any of this—but something like hope and companionship and quiet understanding to remind Yukine that he wasn't as alone as he felt.

Arms wrapped around him tightly, and Yukine realized he was sobbing those stupid crybaby tears again, as if his heart was being wrenched right out of his chest.

"Let me go," he choked out past his sobs. "You're all sweaty and gross."

Yato said nothing, only pulled him closer. He wrapped one arm around Yukine and tangled the other hand in his hair to tuck the shinki's head down against his chest. Yukine offered one more halfhearted moment of resistance and then collapsed against Yato's chest, fisting his hands in that stupid jersey as he cried his heart out.

He cried until his sobs had died down to sniffles and he felt hollow and scooped out inside. He stood in Yato's embrace for a moment more, secretly savoring that feeling of being _safe_ and _loved_ and _protected_ , before leaning back. This time, Yato let him go. They stared at each other for a few seconds, but then Yukine turned his gaze back on Suzuha's tree.

They stood in silence for a few minutes, with only the breeze whispering through the leaves for company.

"Are you ready to go back?" Yato asked finally. "Or would you rather stay here longer?"

"Stay," Yukine rasped.

"Okay." Another pause. "Do you want me to stay, or would you rather be alone?"

 _Stay_ , Yukine wanted to say, even though he was still itching to push the god away. He wasn't quite sure. He would never admit it, but something about Yato's presence was comforting, soothing. At the same time, the god could also be a frustrating companion.

"Why did you come down here?" Yukine asked instead. Time to take the heat off himself and his stupid breakdown and turn the tables. He didn't want to think about this anymore, and was more than a little embarrassed by his display.

"Hm? Just visiting. The flowers are pretty this time of year."

"Let me rephrase, then. What's bothering you so much today?"

"Huh?" Yato started and frowned over at Yukine. "Nothing."

"I'm going to call your bluff."

"You're upset, so it puts me in a slump too. That's all."

Yukine raked an unimpressed look across Yato's face. "That's not all of it. You didn't know I'd be coming here, and you were acting all weird and melancholy."

"I'm telling you–"

"Don't be such a hypocrite. Aren't you the one who's always saying that I should talk to you about things instead of bottling them up?"

Yato leaned down to stick his nose in Yukine's face and stare directly into his eyes. "Ohhh? I'm not stinging you, am I?"

Yukine scowled at the almost playful gesture and shoved his hand in Yato's face until the god straightened back up with a whine. "Of course not. You know that's not how it works."

Yato shoved his hands into his pockets, and the playful look in his eyes was replaced by something flatter. "Then what does it matter?"

"So if you didn't have to feel my negative emotions, you wouldn't think it was important for me to talk to you about them?"

"Uh…" Yato suddenly looked like a deer in the headlights, and Yukine was determined to press his advantage while he had the upper hand. "That's not–"

"It goes both ways, you know," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. He found it easier to push aside his own heartache when he was so focused on someone else, and he would hunt down the truth mercilessly if only to distract himself. "Why don't you trust me?"

Yato groaned. "Are you back on that again? It's not that I don't trust you, just…there are things I can't tell you, Yukine."

"Uh-huh. So everything with Nora and disappearing and winding up in the underworld and not telling us your real name and–"

" _I get it_."

"You can't expect me to share everything with you if you won't share anything with me."

Yato stayed quiet for a long moment, but then sighed harshly and ran a hand through his hair. "Fine, if it will make you feel better, but… You can't tell anyone, Yukine. Promise."

Yukine could hardly believe he'd made the god capitulate so easily. "Promise."

"And there really are some things I can't tell you, so if I say I can't, don't keep harassing me."

"Okay…"

Yato pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a breathy exhale, and melancholy crept into his eyes again as he looked away. "A long time ago, I had another shinki."

A _shinki_? Yukine's mind helpfully conjured up images of Nora's dead smile and the shadowy form of some other mysterious shinki. He already didn't like where this story was going.

"What kind of shinki?" he asked, trying to keep the petty resentment from coloring his voice.

Yato snorted. "I can feel that. Man, you're a jealous one."

"Sh-shut up! Am not!"

"Don't worry, I'm totally monogamous now…"

" _Yato!_ "

Yato's smile turned wistful and he turned his eyes back on the cherry tree. "Well, there's really no reason to be jealous of her…"

"Uh… Okay?" Yukine studied the god's profile, searching for any clues about his mysterious mood.

"Although I guess I should start earlier… Hiiro—Nora—was my first shinki. Ow, stop that. I already released her."

"Sorry," Yukine muttered, only halfway repentant. He accepted that Yato must have had lots of shinki over the centuries, but he was still a little bitter about Nora.

"My father gave her to me. He owned her first." Yato's lips curved into a frown and a troubled look pinched his features. "So I'm the one who made her into a nora. Maybe that's why I felt so…responsible."

Yukine studied him with new interest, intrigued by this revelation. He could still vividly recall the dozens and dozens of names inked in red across Nora's skin, collected over many hundreds of years. And Yato had been around long enough to see her when she had only one of those. And– Well, he would file this information away for later perusal.

"She was supposed to be my playmate," Yato said matter-of-factly. "Except that Father's idea of playing was killing people, obviously. Hiiro enjoyed it. Maybe I did too, although mostly because I wanted to make my dad proud, you know? That was…sort of the reason I existed at all, I guess… Well, he liked trophies. He had a thing for ears. We'd cut them off afterwards and bring them back." He paused and frowned at Yukine, who was starting to feel a little green around the gills. "Sorry, is that too much?"

"N-no…" Yukine shook his head to clear it and pressed his folded arms harder into his stomach. It was horrifying, but it was also just so hard to imagine Yato—silly, childish Yato—doing things like that. But maybe that was just the paradox of gods again. "I mean…I want to understand, at least a little, even if it's…not pretty."

"Yeah…" Yato's voice was tired, like he had a thousand centuries pressing down on him. "Sorry, it's not…really something I like talking about either. It's not really something I'm proud of. I don't want to say anything that…"

Yukine swallowed hard. "I'm still here, aren't I? I mean, it's not like it's a big secret anymore. Stop being so insecure. You'll have to try harder than that if you want to get rid of me."

Yato almost smiled, but the troubled look clouded his features again. "I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone besides Father and Hiiro. A way to control me, I guess. Maybe because I was too excited to grant wishes. Someone would say 'have mercy' and I'd wonder if it was a wish and Hiiro would have to get me back on track and remind me that we were supposed to be killing, not granting wishes. Only Father's wishes counted."

"So… It's not like you were really all that bad to start with. Just…misguided."

Yato shrugged. "He did a good job molding me," he said bleakly. "Anyway, I was out by myself one day, back when I was still just a kid, and a woman found me and asked me to give her a name. She'd been one of Tenjin's shinki, but the old bat went into one of his crazy fits and exiled her or something. She asked me what my name was. I wasn't supposed to talk, so I wrote it… She misread it as 'Yato'."

"Yato?" Yukine's eyes widened. "That's where you got that from?"

"Yeah." Yato let out a self-deprecating laugh, but his eyes were pained. "I let my shinki name me. Father thinks it's pathetic. He'll never call me anything but Yaboku. I tried to correct her later, but it felt sort of…special. I don't know. And later I started using it when I decided that I didn't like who Yaboku had been. It's not even that I was hiding the name itself, just… Yato is who I am now. You never knew Yaboku, so I didn't ever see a reason to bring it up."

Yukine managed to close his gaping mouth with some effort. He had resented it when he found out Yato never told them his true name, but this…made sense. The difference between what he'd heard of Yato in the past and what he saw of Yato today was stark, so it seemed like an almost foregone conclusion that Yato would distinguish between them.

"And you were afraid that it might lead to us finding out about your past and abandoning you," Yukine surmised.

Yato's lips tightened and he swept glassy eyes along the ground. "I named her Sakura."

Yukine looked at the cherry tree with new understanding. "Sakura… So that's why…"

"I wanted…to make her happy. She didn't like it when I stole, so I didn't. She liked flowers and little frogs and sunsets, so I gave her what I could. And I was a stupid kid… I'd only known Father and Hiiro and what made them happy, so I thought we should play…"

"You mean…?"

"She didn't like it, obviously. She left, for a while." Yato shrugged again as he toed at the grass with the tip of his boot. "But I went after her later and apologized. She started teaching me things. About right and wrong, finding the beauty in the world, helping people instead of killing them." He frowned at the ground. "You remind me a little bit of her. Except that she was a lot nicer and you're not nearly as pretty."

"H-hey!" Yukine spluttered to cover his blush.

"It caused problems, obviously. I didn't want to play anymore. Father would punish Hiiro for it, because a disturbance in the god comes from the shinki. I mean, sometimes he would hurt me too, but it's different when someone else is getting hurt because of you. So that was my double life. I 'played' to protect Hiiro and so that I didn't disappoint Father, but I knew Sakura wouldn't approve and I didn't enjoy it anymore. It's one thing to make someone happy, and another to realize that doing so is hurting everyone else, I guess. It messed me up pretty good."

That…sounded a lot less like the rumors of a heartless god of calamity that some of the other gods whispered about and more like a child clinging to an abusive father. That struck a chord somewhere deep within Yukine. Probably just because that kind of abuse and manipulation was terribly cruel to start with and something Yato, especially, shouldn't have ever had to experience.

"I'm sorry," Yukine mumbled. He wanted to know more about Yato's past, but he felt bad prying into it when everything he uncovered was so horrible.

"He knew something was up," Yato muttered. "He had to. I was listless and didn't want to kill and kept disappearing and had asked too many questions. So he tricked me into doing something to her… I knew it was wrong—I didn't know _why_ , but I could _feel_ it—but I was a dumb kid and…"

"What did you do?" Yukine asked curiously.

"That's…what I can't tell you. We wouldn't want the same thing happening to you, would we?"

"If you say so…" Yukine wanted to know, but he had agreed not to press that issue and didn't want to make Yato shut down now. "What happened?"

Yato closed his eyes. "She turned into an ayakashi."

"Wh-what?"

Memories of Yukine's ablution came rushing back: the horror of finding the phantom eyeballs embedded in his skin, the feeling of slipping away to cross the line and become a monster. They haunted him still.

"So I killed her."

"B-but–"

"'Yaboku, you fool, didn't I tell you not to get involved with other people? That's a person's true form, what lurks inside all of them. That's why we cull the herd. Yaboku, why did you do that? You knew it was wrong, didn't you?'" Yato huffed out a soft laugh that held no humor, and Yukine stared at him in horror. "Ah, well. He was always looking for ways to teach me a lesson.

"So I went back to Father and Hiiro, but it was never the same. I never enjoyed the killing again—I still like wielding a sword, it's part of who I am and I'll always be a fighter, but I didn't want to kill people. Eventually I left, and Father tolerated some measure of rebellion as long as I came running back to follow orders and kill on command whenever he called for me. I tried to change myself, but…he always drags me back sooner or later to remind me that I belong to him.

"You see, don't you, why he couldn't let Sakura live?" Yato finally looked back at Yukine, his lips drawn into a sad smile. "She was a 'bad' influence on me and guided me in a different direction than Father wanted. And…I'm afraid that he's targeting you and Hiyori for the same reason. Stay away from Nora, Yukine. There's a reason she's so interested in you, and it's not _only_ because she resents you for taking her place."

"Yato," Yukine breathed. "I'm…"

 _I'm sorry_ seemed like too paltry an offering, but he couldn't seem to come up with any other words at all. As much as he had wanted to know—and still wanted to know—he regretted pushing Yato so much just because he didn't want to deal with his own problems. He had assumed the strange mood was caused by something minor, maybe forgetting that centuries of life also opened immortals up to centuries of pain along with all the rest of it. He was sorry to have clawed so relentlessly at old wounds, especially when Yato had been doing his best to help heal Yukine's.

Yato wrapped his arms around himself and let his gaze wander up the trunk of the tree. "Gods are above right and wrong, everything we do is just, so we should never bow down or apologize for what we do. But…still…" He dropped his head, his hair swinging low to hide his face. "I'm sorry for what I did to her."

Yukine had been so naïve in the beginning. He still remembered hearing about how Yato had killed Bishamon's shinki and asking why. Yato had said it was because he wanted to and Yukine had wondered if he would be the next to die if he was no longer useful, but he'd had it all wrong. Someone who cared that deeply about their shinki would never be that callous, and even with Bishamon's shinki it had been a misunderstanding. Yato had an unfortunate habit of sometimes deliberately painting himself in an extremely unflattering light, as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted everyone to love him or hate him as much as he hated himself.

And that— _that_ —broke Yukine's heart.

Before he thought better of it, he stepped closer and threw his arms around Yato and hid his face in the god's chest. It looked like he did have a few tears left after all.

"That's not–not your fault," he mumbled into the fabric of the tracksuit. "And if she loved you that much, if you loved her that much, I'm sure she'd forgive you anyway. You grew up like she wanted you to, didn't you? Even after everything, you became the person she knew you could be. I-I'm sure that would make her happy."

Yato sighed and patted Yukine on the back. "Sorry, Yukine. I didn't tell you this to upset you. I told you because you asked and I trust you."

"Idiot god, I don't care about that! Just… I'm sorry."

"I really only knew her for a few months," Yato mused, his voice distant and almost detached. "It was centuries ago. But still, I think of her every spring. Like I think of you in the winter." Yukine sniffled and raised his head. Yato was staring up at the cherry blossoms again, a faraway look of longing clouding his eyes. "If you were to ever die…I would remember you."

 _"Don't you think it means something, to remember a friend who it seems like everyone else has forgotten?…We all want to matter to someone, be important to someone, be remembered by someone."_

Tears trickled from Yukine's eyes and he choked up something halfway to a sob. "I would remember you too."

"Ohhh?" Yato looked down, his gaze snapping back to the present. There was still a sheen of pain brightening his eyes, but a smirk twisted his lips. "Trying to get rid of me already? Silly Yukine. You'll be stuck with me till the end. I'll take great joy in annoying you up to the very last second. You're never going to be free of me."

Yukine choked out a laugh despite himself, which was probably the point. He retracted one arm to dig through his pocket. Did he have…?

His fingers closed around metal. He grasped one of Yato's hands, interlacing their fingers. The five yen coin was cool and smooth pressed between their palms like a promise.

He gave Yato a wobbly smile. "Sounds like a plan."

Yato blinked down at him and then one corner of his mouth curved into a strange little half-smile. "I hear you."

He gripped Yukine's hand back and settled his free arm around the shinki's shoulders, and Yukine leaned into him while they turned their gazes back up to the blossoms overhead. They had both lost friends beneath the cherry trees, but maybe they had also found each other.

* * *

 **Note: In a world where Yato actually talked lol But really, I just like the idea of him and Yukine bonding a little over the people they've lost, especially since they've got that connection with their fancy tree. It's the sort of connection that makes my fingers itch with potential. Because angst lol**


End file.
